vel of the whole flank of the
mountain being now so much reduced, the glacier has brought itself by
its own work into warmer climate, and has wrought out its own
destruction. It would gradually be thinned away, and in many places at
last vanish, leaving only the barren rounded mountains, and the tongues
of ice still supplied from the peaks above.

Sec. 18. Such is the actual condition of the Alps at this moment. I do not
say that they have in reality undergone any such process. But I think it
right to put the supposition before the reader, more with a view of
explaining what the appearance of things actually is, than with any wish
that he should adopt either this or any other theory on the subject. It
facilitates a description of the Breche de Roland to say, that it looks
as if the peer had indeed cut it open with a swordstroke; but it would
be unfair to conclude that the describer gravely wished the supposition
to be adopted as explanatory of the origin of the ravine. In like
manner, the reader who has followed the steps of the theory I have just
offered, will have a clearer conception of the real look and anatomy of
the Alps than I could give him by any other means. But he is welcome to
accept in seriousness just as much or as little of the theory as he
likes.[56] Only I am well persuaded that the more familiar any one
becomes with the chain of the Alps, the more, whether voluntarily or
not, the idea will force itself upon him of their being mere remnants of
large masses,--splinters and fragments, as of a stranded wreck, the
greater part of which has been removed by the waves; and the more he
will be convinced of the existence of two distinct regions, one, as it
were, below the ice, another above it,--one of subjected, the other of
emergent rock; the lower worn away by the action of the glaciers and
rains, the higher splintering and falling to pieces by natural
disintegration.

Sec. 19. I press, however, neither conjecture nor inquiry farther; having
already stated all that is necessary to give the reader a complete idea
of the different divisions of mountain form. I proceed now to examine
the points of pictorial interest in greater detail; and in order to do
so more conveniently, I shall adopt the order, in description, which
Nature seems to have adopted in formation; beginning with the mysterious
hardness of the central crystallines, and descending to the softer and
lower rocks which we see in some degree modified